Community Recap: “Horror Fiction In Seven Spooky Steps” (and the Show’s Best Costumes)

As shown during the tag of last week’s episode, Britta asked everyone in the Study Group to fill out a simple psychology test for her. Now, she has the PENIS to the PENIS, and the PENIS shows that someone in the Seven could have been in Seven. To find out the potential-killer, she gets everyone to tell supposedly spooky stories, which end up revealing not which of them might slash their throats in the middle of the night, but rather, about the kind of people they are, and how they see everyone else in the group.

For instance, Abed’s story is logical to a fault. He chooses to fill plot holes rather than tell an actually scary story (and that maybe he has affections for Britta and her symmetrical face, too?), while Pierce spins an old man yarn about how he’s irresistible to the ladies (Shirley, Britta, and Annie, AT THE SAME TIME) and his penis is evidently long enough that he can beat up people with it. Shirley’s an angel who comes down from Heaven not to save her weed-loving, flannel-wearing friends from the Rapture but to rub it in their faces that they should have been more Christian, and Troy literally can’t live without Abed, when the two are sewn together by a crazy, racist old guy who bares a strong resemblance to another crazy, racist old guy they know. Then there’s Annie, our dear sweet Annie.

Her story, of course, stars Jeff, who’s a vampire and keeps Britta (a “drained and tainted bitch dog”) in his closest to constantly feed off her. This is Annie’s not-so-subtle, yet brilliant way of showing her anger and jealously about their friends-with-benefits situation, and because she’s dear sweet Annie, she tries the loving-through-learning method. She teaches Vampire Jeff to read, and once he’s mastered King Lear (verdict’s still out on him tackling the works of Warren Pece), her work is done. OR IS IT? No, it’s not, because as it turns out, she’s a werewolf, and she mutilates Jeff and swallows his eyeball, leaving it attached to the optic nerve, so he can see himself being eaten alive. At this point, I think Annie’s the deepest character on the show, because for most of seasons one and two, we thought of her as a modern-day Little Red Riding Hood (literally, when she wore the outfit during a Halloween episode), but she’s actually more wolf than innocent girl. Still, if Jeff treats her like shit, I’m going to go into protective Dad mode and give him a butt for boobs.

I liked “Horror Fiction” a lot, and thought it was the funniest episode of the season (“That wasn’t even a ghost story. That was like an episode of some show we’re too young to have heard of”). But I’ll admit that it airing after “Remedial Chaos Theory,” which also used the seven-story structure, did it no favors, and it’s impossible not to think of Treehouse of Horror when watching a multiple-sketch Halloween episode. Plus, the Britta’d ending, which unsuccessfully brought in Chang, mostly felt rushed and unsatisfying. I say “mostly” because it’s revealed that on top of Abed being the only sane member of the Seven, it also furthered the Jeff as Villain arc by him being the only one who didn’t take the test seriously. BOOOO (not a ghost BOOOO, either). I really can’t wait to see where they’re going with this.

But enough about plot development and words. “Horror Fiction” was Community’s third Halloween episode, and it continued the show’s now-annual tradition of the cast wearing amazing costumes. Here are my favorites from season one’s “Introduction to Statistics,” season two’s “Epidemiology,” and season three’s “Horror Fiction in Seven Spooky Steps.”